


Pointe Shoes and Prana-Bindu

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Belly Dancer Kylo, Belly Dancing, Clothed Sex, Costumes, Dancing, Dune references everywhere, Family Secrets, Feelings Realization, Food, Frottage, Hux Is an Idiot, Hux is Not Nice, Hux is vain, Kylo is shy, M/M, Masks, Masturbation, Mistaken Identity, Pining, Secret Identity, Self-Denial, Self-Esteem Issues, ballet Hux, just excessive descriptions of everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:42:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7426126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine Kylo dancing in layer after layer of dark sheer diaphanous fabric, shot through with silver and iridescent glitter so every time he spins he looks like a nebula exploding and folding it on itself, he is the birth of universes and the death of everything with each impossibly light and graceful step.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tlulaxa Flesh Merchant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [squire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/gifts).



> Inspired by gifs of male belly dancers and encouraged by the gorgeous art of Sinningsquire and Bona-Mana on Tumblr.

"I promise you Hux- you're going to love this."

Darcy _hated_ that phrase. Dopheld used it at least once a week in an attempt to persuade Hux to do something he didn't want to waste time on. Most irritatingly he was usually right. 

He wouldn't be right this time though. Hux was absolutely determined that he wouldn't like this latest offering, because Dopheld and Phasma had decided they should all go out to see a belly dance performance. 

Hux _hated_ belly dancing. Well at least he hated the kind of belly dancers that performed in pubs with names like The Hobgoblin. They'd be chubby office workers who practiced once a week and spent more money on costumes than classes. Hux hadn't spent a minimum of three hours a day training, every day since he was six years old, to consider that kind of performer to be a dancer. 

He knew he was just winding himself up for a snit. It was the way Dopheld had said it that had rubbed him up the wrong way. He'd used that lascivious tone of his. The one that let his native German accent slip through. The one that had absolutely no place coming out of a mouth that looks that innocent. It was the one he'd used that time he'd dragged Hux down the Reeperbahn. Then once he'd been absolutely certain of his colleague's orientation it had also been the one he'd used to get Hux out of his clothes. More than once.

They hadn't worked out as a couple. Dopheld was the kind of power bottom that made Darcy's fingers itch to punish too harshly and push too far. But they'd remained friends. The kind of friends who still occasionally got nasty in the dressing rooms after a particularly good performance. 

Somewhere around the time Dopheld had started dating his street dancer, thus becoming technically unavailable, he decided that friends meant being personally responsible for finding Hux someone new to fuck. From the way he'd said "you're going to love this" he clearly imagined that he'd found Hux a new toy. 

If he honestly thought Hux was going to fall for anyone at a belly dance recital then he was quite frankly delusional.

With his terrible mood following Hux like his own personal cloud he stomped through the doors of the Hobgoblin, dropped the cover charge into the ticket girls hand without a word and followed his friends towards the bar. 

Almost every eye was on them. And so they should be, they looked amazing. Tiny delicate Dopheld hanging off the muscular arm of the even shorter Finn; towering Phasma in ridiculous heels, all muscular thighs and bright red lips; and of course waifish ethereal Hux, his red hair an artful mess, his loose white shirt clinging just so, his leggings leaving nothing to the imagination. Yes, look ye mortals and despair, for you will nev...

His train of thought and vanity was derailed when a great, hulking slab of muscle walked straight into him. 

Instinctively the man caught Hux by the waist to stop him from falling. They both gasped when they realised that the man's hands were large enough to fully encircle his waist. Licking his lips Hux allowed his eyes to move slowly up the broad chest wrapped in a too-small shirt, anticipating the moment when he looked into this stranger's eyes. Based on what he could see of his physique he'd be beautiful. Hux wouldn't even need to watch the performance, he could just drag this specimen into the men's room and ravish hi... Oh. His eyes had finished their journey and found a pale uneven face dotted with moles and framed by comically large ears. The man's hair was pulled back into a bun so inexpert it looked like it had been arranged using a hedge rather than a brush.

Hux recoiled before his mind could register the lush expressive mouth or the glittering soulful eyes that filled with hurt. With a mumbled apology he broke away and dashed towards the bar, desperate for a drink and uncaring of where the other man went. 

Now he was irritated, disappointed AND sexually frustrated. This night was a disaster. It had barely even started yet and Hux already wanted to go home.

His spirits rose slightly when a handsome man with perfect stubble and smouldering eyes waved to Finn from an empty table. Perhaps this was what Dopheld had been hinting at, maybe the night wasn't a complete disaster.

Alas he was disappointed again when he finally turned from the bar, a glass of Perry in his hand to find that the stranger was now sitting in between Dopheld and his boyfriend. He was holding hands with both of them. Yes of course, just when Hux wasn't getting laid he was going to have to watch the beginnings of a ménage à trois. At least it'd be more visually please than whatever happened on the small stage at the rear of the pub.

Settling in at the table he listened politely to the introductions. The newcomer was called Poe apparently, a composer by trade rather than a dancer like everyone else at the table. He seemed interested enough in everyone else's chosen school of dance, discussing the differences in writing music for each. Surprisingly he was familiar with the ballet company and had pleasant things to say about Darcy and Dopheld's most recent performance together. 

Hux would have loved to hear more praise for his performance but a sudden drop in the lighting indicated that the performance was about to start. The rest of the table fell silent and turned towards the stage in anticipation. Rolling his eyes, Hux did the same, raising his glass to his lips to hide what he expected to become a smirk of superiority. And froze.

The music began as the sound of distant crowds screaming and chanting, overlaid with an odd mechanical groaning. A totally unexpected figure had appeared on the stage. For a start it was a man, bare chested and seemingly sculpted by some Renaissance master. Heavy black skirts were slung devillishly low about his hips. Standing stock still but for small subtle movements of his hands, gleaming bangles and body paint showed off the thickness of his biceps and the fluid grace of his wrists. Bizarrely there was a burnished bronze mask covering his face and a fringed scarf wrapped around his hair but somehow the inhuman mystery of it added to the performance. 

Gradually over a seemingly endless minute of slow small movements the dancer built towards a release of tension that gently transitioned in a coin rattling shimmy of hips that had no right being so flexible. The beat began and the dancer surged into life.

As the strings built through the music he undulated around the stage, making a few square feet seem far larger as he dipped and swayed with the changing tempo. He rolled his hands and his whole body followed in a wave form that began at his feet and dragged upwards through crotch, abs, ribs and chest in a way that highlighted every individual muscle. And there were so many muscles. He was already glistening with sweat as the first song drew to a close. 

Hux went to lick his lips at the tantalising sight and realised the glass was still pressed against his mouth. Condensation gathered chill against his chin, a sharp contrast to the heat he felt building across his cheeks. Gulping back the tart bite of the pear cider he willed the drink to cool him even as the beginning of the next song sent his heart rate soaring. 

This time the dancer became more sinuous in his movement, spinning out low and wide, trailing fluttering skirts and strings of beads as the music slowed, then twitching his hips as the beat intensified. How could this creature of pure muscle move more lightly on his bare feet than Hux could manage in his pointe shoes. How could such thick, beautifully formed limbs still move with such fluidity, grace, and speed. 

The music was fascinating, an industrial mix of Middle Eastern traditions and odd vocals that had been distorted and edited to the point of incomprehension. It created the feeling of an alien yet human landscape, like one of those 1960s science fiction stories his father had always favoured. Desert nomads trapped on a planet ruled by titanic monsters and unending thirst. Yes, Hux could see this dancer transported to some darkened cantina hundreds of light years away, dancing for the pleasure of princes and smugglers alike. He was far too perfect for the mundanity of Camden Town on a Sunday night.

Twenty five minutes was an eternity that lasted an instant. As the dancer folded up and vanished in a swirl of black skirts Hux felt like he was breathing for the first time in days. 

Three seats down Dopheld leaned forward and said, "so Hux, what did you think?" with a lewd grin. 

The look Darcy shot him might have frozen the blood in Dopheld's veins if his face hadn't been trying to colour match with the red of his hair. Throwing back the last of his drink Hux stood up and walked away without a word.

He hated it when Dopheld was right. 

He stood in the street for a while, chain smoking menthols and considering going back inside. He could just see the rest of them through the pub windows. Mitaka seemed to be plying his two paramours with shots whilst Phasma had found one of her modern dance colleagues and had installed the smaller woman on her knee. That settled it. After a sublime experience like that, Hux couldn't bring himself to become immersed in the mundane again so soon. Or, though he'd never admit it to himself, being the only single person at the table would be unbearable.

In another addition to the seemingly endless list of things he hated- he'd also just missed his train. Waiting on Tube platforms was one of his least favourite occupations when he was alone. He knew that despite his height he looked like an easy target with his delicate limbs. Watching each newcomer to the platform he turned his switchblade in his pocket reminding himself that he did know how to use it. 

Someone dropped a holdall by his feet causing him to jump a little more than he might have liked. Glancing across he realised it was the disappointing muscle from the pub, now looking significantly more dishevelled. Six minutes until the next train. Awkward. 

The man gave him a small timid smile before turning to stare politely forward at the various posters on the opposite side of the tunnel. Well at least he had the decency to wait for the train like a proper Londoner- in silence and avoiding eye contact. For some reason he couldn't quite put his finger on Hux found himself struggling to do the same. His gaze kept on drifting to the side, surreptitiously studying the slightly taller man. 

Perhaps he'd been too hasty in his judgment. On further consideration the man's features were closer to striking than ugly. Cleaned up he might make an attractive specimen one day. Darcy's mind drifted back to the dancer, he doubted this man would ever be that attractive. 

It was only when the train arrived and the man gave him an embarrassed glance that Hux realised he's strayed from furtive study to outright staring. He almost considered not getting on the train, but it was the last journey of the evening and he really couldn't afford to walk home with early morning rehearsals the next day. So he climbed onboard, took a seat opposite the muscle, offered an halting apologetic smile and stared resolutely out of the window. The music from the performance and one particularly step shimmy repeated in his mind as he waited for the announcer to call his station. By the time he got off at Angel he was humming the tune under his breath. He didn't notice the other man watching him leave. 

\-----

Hux certainly didn't google the mysterious belly dancer the instant he got home. No he hung up his clothes, completed his skin care routine and got the eight hours of sleep he knew he needed to function. It was three days before he finally gave in and looked him up. 

"Kylo Ren" was his stage name. No real name was given anywhere, nor was there a single photograph showing him face, despite some of the pictures and videos including costumes that consisted of nothing but a few pieces of gauze or strings of beads. 

If Hux hadn't been fascinated before he certainly was now. He'd spent his entire career in a dance belt and the sight of all that free movement had him staring and cringing by turns. An impressive display but destined to end badly. And yet he couldn't stop watching. He just had a professional interest in the man's techniques, that was all. It was harder to convince himself of that when he woke up at 4am with an aching erection and an industrial bass line pounding through his mind.

Two weeks later he saw by chance that the dancer had another performance, this time at a high end restaurant called Gilgamesh. He didn't hesitate a moment before buying a ticket. He had no interest in pan-Asian cuisine, but he'd dined in the VIP lounge there before. It was an impressive building with rich golden Babylonian inspired architecture and the just the thought of how Kylo might tailor his performance to that environment was food for his soul.

Of course he didn't say a word about it to Dopheld Mitaka. The man _had_ been right. But he didn't need to know that. Some things should not be encouraged.


	2. Lisan Al Gaib

The three weeks between purchasing the ticket for Kylo's restaurant performance and the actual event passed more or less uneventfully for Hux.  
  
He had his own practice and performance to focus on, so he hardly ever thought about the mysterious masked belly dancer.  
  
No, he absolutely did not think about him as he ran his barre routines in front of the expensive mirrored wall in his expensive workout clothes in his expensive studio apartment overlooking the Thames.  
  
He didn't think about him when he passed through the Camden Town tube station or when he heard industrial music filtering down from the student flats he passed on the way to the theatre.  
  
He didn't think about him when he went to the gym for his tri-weekly treadmill date with Mitaka, Phasma and Rey. Particularly not when he noticed the slab of human muscle from the same night loitering in the weights area. It was just his luck that he had to wait three weeks to see Kylo again but he got see that ungainly lump on the edge of his sight line on a regular basis.  
  
It was bizarre. He had to be the first guy Darcy had seen in that corner of the gym who actively avoided the mirrors. Despite the fact that he was clearly significantly stronger than most of the other men there. What on earth did he have to be shy about? He was well built, tall and broad shouldered, and yes his hair was a disaster and his face... well, none of that would matter if he'd just hold himself with proper posture and walk with confidence. He was half tempted to have a word with him, it was maddening.  
  
Especially since Darcy's mind had linked the disappointing muscle to Kylo somehow, so he always found himself distracted and half hard by the end of a running session, his leggings chaffing uncomfortably whilst he tried to think of anything else.  
  
It didn't work.  
  
Those were the nights when his performance sparkled that little bit more than usual and his partners praised his focus during their pas de deux, totally failing to realise that he wasn't thinking of them at all.  
  
Those nights always ended the same way- Hux kneeling on his bed, face pressed into the memory foam pillow and three fingers deep in his ass frantically trying to imagine how it would be to bring Kylo home with him. Could he persuade him to dance with him? Could be talk him into fucking him in front of the mirrors? Would he wear the mask when he did so?  
  
He never did try to imagine what his face might look like without it.

* * *

Hux followed the waitress with an odd combination of anticipation and nerves churning deep in his stomach.  
  
This wasn't the kind of restaurant where one dined alone, especially when working in the entertainment industry. It was the kind of restaurant where one came to be seen.  
  
He'd been here before, for opening night parties and such, and it's was always the same. People entered the VIP lounge with covetous eyes, peering into the curtained off alcoves in an unsubtle attempt to spot a celebrity. Others walked through the main restaurant with their phones in hand pretending to text while trying to discrete photograph the diners. Everyone knew it happened and as principle dancer for the rising First Order Ballet Company Hux would normally have revelled it. The Company was famous but they weren't world renowned. Not yet. But they would be. And it wouldn't do for Darcy Hux, son of the infamous impresario Brendol Hux, to be photographed dining alone and mooning over an oddball amateur dancing in a mask.  
  
Apparently the restaurant felt the same way about lone diners, as they'd seated him in a dark alcove by the bar leaving the seats closer to the stage to the more obviously influential clientele. Hux frowned as he spotted a table filled with Artistic Directors from various dance companies seated front and centre.  
  
A tall painfully thin gentleman with his back to Hux had a distinctive scar running across his bald skull. That had to be Snoke, the rarely seen AD from his own company.

Hurriedly Hux raised the menu. He was a little more concerned now than he had been about being spotted. Kylo Ren wasn't classically trained, so although he might make guest appearances he could never be a real threat to his own position. But if Hux was seen here, Snoke might suspect him of courting some kind of collaboration with Kylo.

His mind couldn’t even begin to conceive of what that might look like. Shaking his head he tried to concentrate on the page in front of him.  
  
The menu made no sense. It was gibberish. Peering closer he realised it was a themed meal, one created specifically for the evening and tying into the performance itself. That was different.  
  
Fifteen minutes on Google and Hux had a vague understanding of the theme- it was based on a series of science fiction novels that had been translated into other media with varying degrees of success. He recognised some of the bizarre vocabulary from the titles of songs used in some of Kylo's youtube videos, so it must be important to him beyond this one performance.  
  
Darcy ordered the first novel and several DVDs through his Amazon Prime account. For 'research purposes', he lied to himself.  
  
Each course would be accompanied by a dance related to a theme from the novel. Since he hadn't read it Hux intended to concentrate on the performance. He could unravel the meaning later.  
  
The first course, some kind of coconut and noodle soup, was placed in front of him moments before Kylo took to the stage. It would have been impossible to eat and watch the performance, though a quick glance told him that some of the patrons made an attempt. But Hux couldn’t keep his eyes off the man on the stage, and he didn’t even try to.

Kylo was dressed in cream and gold, heavy black underskirts showing at his ankles to balance the black of his hair and the dark gleam of his mask.

There was a pale wooden fan in each hand, a diaphanous veil flowing like water from his fingers as he spread them and began an almost hypnotically slow sway across the stage.

The music and the dance were unhurried and languorous, speaking of a hot desert nights and a world of slow necessity while the veils fluttered and undulated around the solid, rock like planes of Kylo’s body. It was the flittering, ephemeral passage of life across an unchanging, unforgiving landscape.

Hux blinked, confused by his own thought processes.  

Gradually Kylo seemed to be relaxing, his movements stretching and shifting into longer and wider gestures. His hips snapped and shimmied behind the passage of the veils, never fully seen for more than a moment.

The drum faded out, the song almost appearing to end as time itself slowed with Kylo’s impossibly drawn out back bend. It ended with his his long, wild hair brushing across the floor, arms outstretched for a moment, until the veils themselves seemed to lure the huge man upwards again.

The beat returned as Kylo righted himself.

He was dancing with the veils as if they were partners now. They were no longer merely orbiting him but flowing synchronicity his movements, both leading and following as he flexed and twisted across the stage and finally away.

The audience stared for a moment, unsure, until applause washed the silence from the room.

Although it had seemed almost endless to Hux, the dance had taken barely four minutes.

How odd, Hux thought as he ate, to turn a performance like this, one that demanded concentration from all parties, into dinner theatre. He wondered if there were some deeper meaning to the entire thing that he simply didn’t understand without a proper knowledge of the source materials.

In front of the stage the gathering of Artistic Directors seemed to be enthusiastic, chattering happily amongst themselves with expansive gestures and frequent laughter. Hux stared at the back of Snoke’s head but it was difficult enough to tell what the man thought when they were face-to-face. There was no hope of learning anything right now. 

Despite the soup from the last course, and excellent vividly blue, spiced cocktail that was served with the fish, Hux felt his mouth go dry the instant Kylo returned to the stage. He recognised this costume, or rather half of it.

It was an intricate but heavy bead and chain affair that had previously featured in one of Kylo's nude photoshoots. Except he was wearing it with long diaphanous skirts in various shades of green and blue. The individual fabrics were sheer enough that the uplighting from the floor showed the shape of his legs as he moved and for this song they needed to be seen.

Hux barely even tasted his fish before the fork was abandoned next to his plate.  
  
The music was clearly meant to emulate water, both the swelling tides of an ocean and the soft fall of rain. Kylo effortlessly emulated them both. It should not have been possible for a man of his size to take such light and effortless but quick steps. Hux found himself fascinated by the other man’s feet, noting each gentle step and the fact that the thick fall of metal and glass beads made barely a sound despite the speed of his movements.

An echoing mechanical chanting began and Kylo shook his hips. His costume rattled and crashed together like thunder rolling through a mountain range as he progressed across the stage.

The machine voices faded to be replaced by delicate electronic beeps and Kylo became the rain again.

Again the music changed, the storm returned, this time accompanied by fast paced strings and Kylo twisted and spun, skirts flying, muscular legs on display, oiled skin highlighted by the glittering lights. He was the embodiment of water worship, an ocean spirit welcoming the rain back to it’s rightful home.

All too soon the song ended and Kylo faded back into the dark.

Hux ate mindlessly. The fish was cold, and a lot spicier than anything he normally ate but he didn’t notice. His mind was too busy focused on memorising as much of the dance as possible.

Around him the room had filled with chatter again. Everyone seemed to be impressed now. A couple at the table next to him were having an animated conversation about the theme, referencing the book he’d ordered half an hour earlier.

Hux was beginning to consider getting it as an e-book on his phone when his plate and glass - when had he finished the cocktail? - were replaced with the main course and… something black and steaming in a glass latte mug. He stared for a moment, confused, when the light’s faded again and the sound of chanting filled the room.

Kylo was dressed in layer upon layer of dark mesh and silk and tulle, every fabric shot through with strands of metallic thread that flickered around his hips in the dim room as he took slow undulating steps.

There seemed to be no end to the fabric. It trailed black and navy and purple over his hair from the top edge of his mask, wrapping semi-transparent across his powerful frame to hang from wide shoulders, looping through his fingers as he twisted his hands.

Suddenly the room was practically shaking with a chant of “Maud'Dib” and Kylo was transformed. Tiny shimmering lights scattered amongst his skirts begin to glow through the cloud of fabric.

Kylo span like a dervish, arms stretched wide and his skirts floating up and out, a perfectly balanced cloud of stars expanding around his body. The music shifted, darkened, screams cutting under the chants and Kylo abruptly changed direction. The shift dragged the fabric in, pulling it tight around his legs until momentum pulled it outward again.

Hux was transfixed.

He looked like a nebula exploding and folding it on itself.

He was the birth of universes and the death of everything with every impossibly light and graceful step. 

He was the most stunning thing Darcy has ever seen in his life.

The lights in the skirts went out and the house lights dropped with them. When they returned the stage was empty and Hux felt almost bereft.

He nearly didn’t bother to eat the food in front of him. His chest was aching in a way he usually only experienced on opening nights, when it was his own triumphant feet crossing the stage. It was disorientating to feel it whilst sitting so inert and detached from the proceedings.

It was only when he remembered that the meal was supposed to be an element of the performance- that Kylo himself must have sat down with the chefs to construct it- it was only then that he began to eat. Still, he barely tasted the curried meat and artfully arranged vegetables.

The drink however. The drink he’d probably never forget. Still warm in it’s glass mug, ethereal swirls of gold and copper glitter rising through the thick black fluid, it was like a recreation of Kylo’s performance that he could hold in his hand. He had no idea what was in, or how it had possibly been achieved, but it coated Darcy’s throat with a rich, deep fruit flavour that lingered. Each time he ran his tongue across his lips a thrilling hint of spices burnt cold across his tastebuds.

He wondered if Kylo would taste like this if he somehow removed that blank bronze mask to kiss him. Hux trembled slightly at the thought. How had the course of five weeks and two performances brought him to this point?

He didn’t get a chance to think about it. Dessert arrived- striated layers of brilliant jewel coloured sorbet served in a tall glass. With a gold straw.

Hux raised an eyebrow in disbelief at the odd arrangement.

This time the lights didn’t lower much as Kylo returned to the stage, the music building ominously with each step.

Mouth suddenly dry, Hux was grateful for the straw- it might just stop him from biting clean through his own lips.

Kylo was nude or nearly so, unfairly small black leather shorts cutting low across his hips to show off the ripple of his eight-pack abs and the sharp lines of his obliques. He stopped, mask facing the floor, hands held against his chest for a moment, swaying gently in place as an low mechanical beat swelled.

His skin was glowing and shimmering in the half light, but it wasn’t until a drum roll echoed through the room and his hands seemed to catch fire that Hux realised his entire body was covered in swirling lines of golden body paint.

Kylo opened his hands and a pair of glowing poi dropped down to hang in front of his pelvis for a moment before he began to move, spinning them around himself in an intricate, beautiful patterns of light that lingered on the retina as he shifted. They were clearly made from LEDs but they’d be wrapped in layers of fluttering golden fabric that made them look like flame as they orbited his flexing torso.

The music had a medley of beats overlaying one another. Sometimes it was slow and sonorous with an undercurrent of tension that would slowly build to something approaching a trace beat. Kylo moved perfectly in time with all of it, glacial and ethereal transitioning effortlessly to gestures so fast that Hux couldn’t follow them.

There were moments- when the beat was at its fastest and the distorted alien voices were babbling- when there almost seemed to be two Kylos and far more than just the one pair of poi encircling him.

Finally the music broke, stuttering and skipping to it’s close, and Kylo seemed to break with it, spinning impossibly wide, falling to his knees as he bent back, still turning, until… silence.

Kylo collapsed to the stage and again the lights went out.

For the first time in what seemed like forever Hux breathed.

The metal straw was crushed between his teeth. But at least all the dessert was gone. 

He stayed in his seat once the meal was over, half overwhelmed and unable to process what he’d just seen, but also half curious. He'd noticed that the table full of Artistic Directors were clearly waiting for Kylo Ren to appear, all heads turned towards the door he'd last exited by. Naturally, if Kylo was going to be meeting with such influential individuals he wouldn't be wearing the mask any more, and Hux did so want to see his face.  
  
Nothing happened and went on happening for nearly twenty minutes. Finally Mon Mothma, the deceptively cheerful Lead Director of L'Alliance Rebelle, summoned a waiter only to be informed that Kylo had left five minutes earlier. Yes, he'd been told about their presence. No, he'd given no explanation for leaving.  
  
With a sigh Hux threw down more money than was necessary to pay for his meal and slipped out while Snoke's table descended into uproar over Kylo's behaviour.

iPhone in hand, he queued up this evening's tracks in Spotify as he ran lightly down the stairs.

What happened next was a disaster. He was so determined on getting to the next train that he wasn't really paying attention to where he was walking and, just outside the main doors of the restaurant, he ran directly into a huge black clad figure, scattering the man's excessive collection of bags.  
  
His heart was in his mouth as he instinctively reached out to steady the man and found his hands on the wide muscular shoulders of Kylo Ren.

Hux was about to stammer an apology- and quite possibly fling himself to the ground in contrition- when the man turned to face him with a mumbled “sorry” of his own.

It wasn’t Kylo Ren at all.

Hux felt his face flush as he stared in disappointed shock up at the mole strewn face of the muscle bound man from the gym.

He pulled his hands back in alarm, but then- realising how rude _that_ looked- he gave the man’s massive bicep an awkward pat and bent to lift the scattered bags back into their original pile.

He might not have wanted to speak to this peculiar individual but still- Darcy _had_ caused the problem and even he wasn't oblivious enough to let the man apologise for his own mistake.  
  
"No, don't be sorry!" Hux said with forced cheer, hurriedly straightening as a taxi pulled up to the curb. "I wasn't looking where I was going, it's my fault."  
  
"S'ok." The man said quietly, handing the bags to the taxi driver with a nod. "Hey, you usually get off the tube at Angel right? Do you want to share a ride?"  
  
Darcy couldn't stop his eyes widening in slight horror at the suggestion. Getting in a taxi with a stranger man he'd barely spoken to who apparently knew the details of his route home? Not happening in a million years.  
  
"Uh, no thanks, I'm staying with friends." He lied, turning to walk back through the market towards Camden Lock, at least until the taxi was out of sight. "Thank you anyway!"  
  
"Okay." The stranger said, rubbing his neck as he climbed into the back of the taxi.  
  
From the corner of his eye Hux noticed the sparkle along the man's hand and neck but didn't register it as the reflection gold body paint until the car was already pulling away.  
  
It couldn't be.

He half-ran back towards the road, but the taxi was already gone.  
  
There was something in the gutter where it had been knocked out of one the man's bags. It was one of the immensely long silk fans from the first dance, fortunately wrapped in thick plastic that protected it from the puddle it sat in.  
  
Hux stared at it, feeling a little bit sick with disbelief. Kylo Ren was the muscle. The awkward, shy, ungainly creature that he’d seen three times a week in the gym for almost a month was Kylo Ren.

He'd just turned down a ride with the most attractive dancer he'd ever seen.

Folding his legs beneath him he sat on the curb and put his head in his hands.

“Darcy,” he muttered quietly to himself, “you conceited prick, what have you done?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo was dancing to The Water of Life, My Home Caladan, The Ascension of Muad'dib and Lisan Al Gaib all by Stoneburner. You can hear all the songs so far on [the Spotify playlist here. ](https://open.spotify.com/user/phantoms-siren/playlist/4yL47JtEIJqWz5rCTDnZH3)


	3. The Inherent Evil Of Face Dancers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sneaks in like it hasn't been four months since the last update*

That night was possibly the worst night’s sleep Darcy had experienced in his entire life. Worse than the night before his first lessons at the Royal Ballet school, worse than the one before his first professional performance, worse even than the entire week before his first performance as principal dancer.

He couldn't even begin to explain how conflicted he felt. He’d thought such terrible things about the man at the gym, for no real reason other than his moles and lack of confidence, but at the same time he was utterly infatuated with Kylo Ren. Who had turned out to be one and the same person.

That face was what was hiding under the mask. Somehow the hunched and ungainly figure transformed into a being of perfect motion when his face was covered. How low was his confidence that he could experience such a complete transformation?

Darcy’s own reaction couldn’t possibly help with that either. Kylo was built like a Renaissance statue and Hux had recoiled like he was the elephant man. The longer he thought about that face the less he could understand his initial attitude. Taken individually Kylo’s facial features were gorgeous. The strong brow, the roman nose, the brilliant glittering eyes, the plush lips.

Oh those lips. It was the thought of those lips that tortured him as he tried to sleep. They had smiled at him only once, a nervous timid flash of warmth as they waited for the tube. It had been a subtle change of expression, but it was more than enough for his hindbrain to extrapolate into soft lingering kisses and far more obscene gestures. Hux could have lived with that but his conscience always chose to remind him of Kylo’s look of hurt each time he pulled away. He hadn’t even been sure he still had a conscience. It was an uncomfortable thought.

And so he’d barely slept. He’d woken with frustrated morningwood that no amount of attention in the shower could bring to completion. He’d ended up running his morning barre routine half hard and unable to meet his own eye in the mirror from guilt.

Then his phone had chirruped and his day got worse. A text from Dopheld reminding him it was a gym day. Kylo was almost guaranteed to be there, there was rarely a day when he wasn’t skulking around the free weights.

Hux contemplated feigning illness or a prior appointment, but his eye was drawn to the wrapped fan he’d rescued from the puddle the night before. He should return it to its owner. Kylo seemed to have been keeping tabs on him so he’d know that Hux should be in the gym today. Delaying would just look strange. And besides, Kylo might need it. There weren’t any upcoming performances listed on his website but perhaps he did private shows.

Hux tried and failed not to imagine what that might look like.

There were photographs of Kylo practically naked on his website. Would it really be such a stretch to him being that kind of dancer? The man could barely meet his eye without the mask. His conscience, apparently rather busy now it had woken up, stepped in to stop that thought process in its tracks.

Still. He should stop being a coward and give back the fan. Perhaps he could start a conversation with the man.

Something in his mind suggested that he might even apologise for his behaviour. But that voice was so far out of character that Hux felt certain it could be safely ignored.

* * *

Kylo seemed to be intentionally ignoring him. He’d tried to give the man a smile as he walked by on his way to the weight area but he’d given no response beyond his posture hunching further inward.

Hux had almost lost his nerve at that. If Dopheld hadn’t insisted on a rather lurid recitation of the previous night’s activities with his new boyfriends - both of whom were sparring in a glass-fronted practice room beyond the weights - Hux might have taken the fan home and kept it to himself. But there was something compelling about listening to exactly how well laid his ex was these days that made him more determined to approach the muscular man now fidgeting with the smallest dumbbells.

It was the perfect time to speak to him since he wasn’t concentrating on anything heavy enough to injure him if he became distracted.

“Excuse me, Kylo…” Hux didn’t get any further than that.

The man looked up with a disproportionate expression of terror. “I’m sorry, you have me confused with someone else.”

Oh. He was American. And he was leaving.

Kylo - and Darcy was absolutely certain that it _was_ Kylo because he still had gold body paint behind his ears - practically ran to the locker rooms.

He probably shouldn’t follow him. This wasn’t a gent’s toilets in a nightclub and Kylo had looked anything but welcoming. He only wanted to return the man’s property and maybe have a quiet conversation with him. But would anyone else see it that way? He walked back to his treadmill to retrieve his water bottle and towel in what he hoped was a nonchalant fashion. Dopheld gave him an exaggerated wink while Phasma gave him a look best described as ‘don’t do it’. Marvellous, simply marvellous. What a show of support.

Kylo was changing at the far end of the last bank of lockers, as hidden away as it was possible to be in the relatively open and unfortunately empty room. The man was bigger than Hux, probably twice his weight, but he was clearly frightened of him for some reason and Hux really would have rather had an independent witness or two to put Kylo more at his ease.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t have you confused with anyone else,” Hux began from a good few feet away, “in fact, I’m pretty certain that I literally ran into you at Gilgamesh last night. Kylo…”

The man sagged like a marionette with half its strings cut, his huge hands coming up to cover his face. The noise of frustration that flowed from his throat as his fingers pushed up and back to pull at his hair hardly seemed human.

“I get it. You worked out who I am and now you’re here to blackmail me.” He turned, watery eyes raking unkindly over Hux’ spandex clad body. “Let me guess, investment banker? You know my mother and now you’re going to expose my dirty little secret in exchange for what? The fucking that your trophy wife can’t give you? Pornographic videos? What do you want?!” Kylo almost shouted the last question before he twisted away to punch the locker door by his head.

Hux almost didn’t catch the muttered “why is it always the hot ones?” that Kylo clearly hadn’t meant for him to hear.

“WOW. Okay then.”

Most of him wanted to walk away because Kylo was clearly a lot more complicated than he’d expected. However his ego was currently holding him rooted to the spot and demanding more information on the subject of ‘the hot ones’. Some days he really hated his ego, even if it did make up 90% of his personality.

“I actually have no idea who you are, and I certainly don’t know who your mother is, nor do I have any idea why I should give a fuck. I just wanted to return the fan you dropped last night.”

The face he’d spent the night dreaming about failed to show any kind of reaction to that. Hux shrugged and opened his locker, rifling through his bag for the fan. When he finally found it he turned, planning to throw it onto the bench near Kylo’s knees, but the massive man had moved on those paradoxically silent feet to stand directly behind him.

“You really have no idea who I am?” He demanded, snatching his fan with cruel fingers. Hux barely noticed. Kylo’s face was inches from his own and those plump lips were right there, terribly tempting despite his anger.

“You’re a belly dancer who wears a mask.” Hux began, ignoring the hiss from Kylo as the man turned to look around them. “A self taught amateur but a very good one. You’re obsessed with Frank Herbert’s Dune and your show last night had more costume changes than a production of Cage Aux Folles. You still have gold paint behind your ear and your right elbow. And you’re an idiot if you think I’m an investment banker.”

Kylo was opening his mouth to reply, and Darcy’s lower-brain was giving him all kinds of suggestions regarding that particular sight, when they were both cut off by a hammering on the main door.

“Oi! Hux!” It was Phasma. “Snoke wants you at the theatre in ten, emergency meeting! Grab Dopheld’s stuff too. He'd get it himself but he's too busy saying his goodbyes to his lover boys.”

‘Emergency meeting’, bullshit, Snoke had just had one of his famous dreams and decided to change 80% of the staging overnight. Again. With a sigh and an eyeroll Hux began to empty his locker.

“Well, nice to meet you, whoever you are.” He muttered, shouldering both bags as an excuse not to look at Kylo’s blank expression anymore.

The man might have said something as he walked away but it was drowned out by Phasma shouting, “come on, twinkle toes, get a move on!”

Sometimes Hux thought about punching her. But he'd just break his hand. And probably get beaten to a pulp for his trouble.

* * *

Despite the uproar over Kylo’s disappearing act after his performance, it seemed that Snoke had still found inspiration in the material. Though of course the ruthless old man would never admit to the origin of any of his ideas, and Hux would never dare to admit he'd been there by calling him out on it.

Fortunately for him majority of the changes were costume based and mostly for the female dancers. He'd been more than a little concerned that Snoke might put him in leather booty shorts. Or worse, the winged monstrosities he'd seen Sting wearing in some of the production photos for the David Lynch movie. He still hadn't watched it yet. After his argument with Kylo at the gym he wasn't sure it was worth it.

But however good the news was for him, he was still going to have to get used to dancing with irate ballerinas who were lit up like Christmas trees. It seemed that Krennic down in costume development hadn't gotten a handle on ‘subtly glittering like a starfield’ just yet and was aiming more for ‘Piccadilly Circus in a power surge’.

As a result of the changes- and the bickering they generated- Hux found him too exhausted to bother with the gym for the rest of the week. He'd rather go for a run along the river with Kylo’s playlist in his ears than listen to any more accounts of Mitaka’s sexcapades.

So it was a week later when Phasma handed him a business card with the word ‘HUCKS’ scrawled across the details for a very gothy DJ service called Knights of Ren. “This was left on my treadmill for you, you lucky man.”

“I don't need a DJ, thanks,” he’d said, totally failing to notice the connection to Kylo _Ren_ until he'd already handed it back. Of course then Phasma had refused to give it back and the whole thing had devolved into a very unseemly wrestling match in the middle of the gym. But the less said about that- and the two week ban it earned them both from said establishment- the better.

* * *

Dancers, generally speaking, didn’t live in the fanciest of digs. Hux knew exactly how lucky he was in that regard. His father might not like him that much but at least he had never had to share. Or live, well… here.

The business card had listed a phone number. The number had gone to voicemail. Hux had left a vague message, not entirely sure he had the right details. Kylo hadn’t written anything on it except a phonetic attempt at his name, so Hux really wasn’t certain of the intent behind it.

He still wasn’t sure now.

He’d received a text asking for a selfie taken with the TV news on in the background, like he was trying to contact Jack fucking Bauer instead of a Sunday night pub crowd belly dancer. Then he’d gotten complaints for putting a filter on it, like he was going to show his unedited face immediately after dress rehearsals. Hux hadn’t dignified _that_ with a response.

Two hours later, without any further communication from him, he’d received this address, a hand drawn map to reach the front door, and a choice of three time slots.

It probably looked like he was trying to make an appointment with some very specific kind of hooker.

Now that he was standing here, at the bottom of four flights of wrought iron external stairs, facing a feral looking city fox that seemed to live on the second landing, Hux couldn’t help but wonder if he was walking into a situation that would see him sold off for spare parts on the blackmarket.

The fox was hissing at him. He’d had no idea that they did that, but it wasn’t even in the top ten of the most worrying things about this place.

For a start only one in about ten of the bolts holding the metal staircase to the ramshackle Victorian building was still in place. The takeaway on the ground floor looked like the sort of place that would be closed for food hygiene violations only they'd cut up the health inspector instead. The dumpster under the stairs had half a manakin sticking out it. At least Hux hoped it was a manakin. It was surrounded by the mouldering former stock of the boarded up sex shop next door.

The fox vanished onto one of the balconies while Hux climbed the wobbly stairs. He silently thanked it for that - he wouldn't have had the first idea of how to get past the mangy thing, and all his brain power was going towards not screaming with fear every time the staircase shifted.

With each level he climbed the smell of the takeaway was gradually replaced by the smell of students- a peculiar miasma of patchouli, ganj, stale beer, and old books that permeated much of the city. He glimpsed a girl asleep across her books at a desk by a tiny window, someone else asleep on the narrow bed behind her. It was 11am on a bright sunny day. He'd never understood students.

He’d chosen the earliest available window of time on a Sunday when he wasn’t needed at the theatre. Either it’d give him a long time to get to know Kylo, or it’d give him all day to drown his sorrows over getting into a situation this stupid.

The door of the top floor flat had a string of glass nazar amulets hung across the window. The glittering blue wards against the evil eye spun and jingled slightly in the breeze giving the space a sense of peace despite the noises of the city. Hux touched one, carefully turning it to catch the light. It seemed like the sort of thing Kylo would have, the brilliant blue eye in keeping with the rest of his aesthetic.

Below him the fox made a yowling noise and pounced at something, shaking the staircase. Startled Hux went to knock at the door. It was already open and swung in on silent hinges. Well. That wasn't at all creepy.

With the door open Hux could hear music coming from a room just to the left. There was a window but it was covered with strips of black lace and fairy lights. Someone was moving inside but he couldn't see the details. He recognised the song though, something with a mellow rhythm and echoing alien chants. He'd love to see what Kylo would do with a song like that.

Curiosity took the lead and he walked into the flat, totally unannounced.

The doorway to the room on the left, just like its window, was hung with strips of lace and tulle like a starfield of blacks and purples, with strings of lights glittering here and there amongst the fabric. The curtain had been looped back slightly, enough that Hux didn't need to touch it to see inside, though he had to stoop slightly, holding his weight against the wall with one outstretched hand.

The room was like the inside of a geode. It looked like Kylo had covered the walls in any reflective surfaces he could find- broken mirrors, bits of broken cars, silver trays, discarded glass table tops- it was like a magpie's hoard reflecting back a thousand shattered images of the man in the centre of the room. Oh and that man. Hux swallowed guiltily at the sight of him.

Worn out sweatpants were sitting low on his hip bones. Each leg had been slit from ankle cuff to waistband to show off the thick muscles of his thighs. His perfectly sculpted torso was wrapped in a mesh crop top. His artfully messy hair held back with a torn strip of old T-shirt material. Sweat glistened on every visible inch of skin, the droplets highlighted so beautifully by the softly twinkling lights… Kylo looked like a creature from a dream.

Hux tugged at his white loose knit tunic and pale leggings and somehow felt underdressed in this strange, almost magical, apartment.

Kylo was practicing the same dance move over and over, an impossibly deep back bend paired with a shimmy that would show off his abs and his ass and his shoulders all at once when he finally got it right. Watching him move Hux realised the room was a studio, a low budget version on his wall of mirrors back home. The broken reflections left him disoriented but intrigued. Here was the flexing of an eight pack stomach; there was a hand posed just so; impossibly huge feet tripped from one shard to the next while a glimpse of muscular buttock flashed across a convex mirror. The room itself was a performance piece. You could film the same dance from twenty different angles and get twenty unique results. It was fascinating. Snoke would lose his mind if he saw it.

In the centre of the room Kylo was getting deeper and deeper into the move with each repetition, until he finally perfected it, his hair brushing across the floorboards. He grinned at his success and opened his eyes to see Hux watching from the doorway.

It was hard not to laugh at the startled upside down look on Kylo’s face, but Hux managed to turn his reflexive amusement into sincere applause.

Righting himself, Kylo snatched up a towel to dry his face- and possibly cover his blush- while he crossed the room to shut off the music.

“Sorry, the door was unlocked,” Hux said, feeling compelled to fill the awkward silence, “and the uh fox…”

“Oh, that's just Millicent, she won't hurt you.”

“Millicent the fox, right.” Hux raised an eyebrow.

“So, you're Hux, right?” Kylo asked, still not looking at him. “Sorry I kinda mangled your name on that note I left you.”

“It wasn't really a note.” Hux shrugged, confused for a moment until he remembered that he'd included the proper spelling of his name in his text messages. “I’m still not sure why I’m here.”

“Is Hux your first name? Or your last?” Kylo didn't really seem to be listening to him all that closely.

“Last. It's Darcy, Darcy Hux.” There was a birth certificate in a safe somewhere with another name, but the less said about that the better.

“Huh. You have two last names.”

“I’m not sure either ‘Kylo’ or ‘Ren’ qualify as names at all,” Hux snarked back, regretting the attitude immediately but not really able to resist the temptation to let his true nature out.

He had to admit, as gorgeous and fascinating as the guy in front of him was, he did feel more than a little threatened by his seemingly effortless aesthetic. It wasn't an emotion that Hux was used to in the slightest. Kylo had seemed so awkward off stage before, but here in his own space he still carried that confidence he had during performances. It transformed his strange face into something ethereal, beyond tempting and into forbiddingly beautiful. It was most unfair.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Hux continued, trying to save the situation, “I know it's a stage name, I just… why am I here? You really didn't seem to want to talk to me back at the gym…”

Kylo still wasn't looking at him, or maybe he was watching him in the mirrors rather than meeting his gaze directly. Perhaps Kylo had issues with eye contact. That would explain a lot.

“I uh…” The huge man pushed a hand back through his hair, dislodging the tie so it fell in soft waves around his face. “I didn't say thank you. For the fan. I… guess I was embarrassed about the taxi. And assuming… well…” He waved the hand, struggling to articulate all the things he'd accused Hux of back at the gym.

Hux watched him as he floundered. He couldn't really help without sounding even more snarky and judgemental. So he didn't try.

“I uh, guess I liked you. From The Hobgoblin. But I wasn't brave enough to talk to you on the train. Then you ran from me at Gilgamesh. I don't know any other dancers. I don't do this in public, as myself I mean. And when you came up to me in the gym I guess angry rejection met scared paranoia and made…”

“A mess.”

“Yeah.” Kylo smiled slightly, glancing towards Hux for a moment before he looked away again. “I spoke to some of the guys at the gym. Found out a little bit more about you- that you're a real professional dancer at least- and I thought I should take a chance and actually, you know, get to know you.”

Hux stepped properly into the room, ducking under the strings of fairy lights, and extended a hand. “Let's start afresh. I’m Darcy Hux. I’m lead dancer at First Order Ballet Company. Don't think that makes me weak. I don't have you build but I still spend much of my working life lifting 120lb girls…. and boys. I admire your work. It's so very different to my own. I'd love to learn more about it. And you.”

There that hadn't been so difficult, had it?

Kylo stared at his hand like it was a live grenade.

“I’m not expecting…” Hux faltered, trying to work out the tactful way to word the rest of his statement. “... your birth name or anything, just, how you- as you are- would introduce yourself.”

“Oh, uh…” The hand that enveloped Darcy’s was intimidatingly massive. There was only an inch or two difference in height between them, less given Kylo’s bare feet, but he seemed to have been constructed on some other scale than Hux. Where Hux was as spare and slim as a stick figure drawn on tissue paper Kylo was fully three dimensional. Hux wondered whether Kylo could lift him, and what that might feel like.

“Kylo Ren. Belly dancer. DJ. Leatherworker. All amateur of course. Still pays the bills.” Kylo shrugged, his hands going back through his hair again. “My grandfather was in a, I guess you’d call it a dancing adjacent industry and I always wanted to do it, but my family wasn’t keen. Tried to make me do other things. I’m self taught, I’ve never been to a class or danced with anyone else. I saw classes though, back home. You could see them from the weight area of the gym so that’s how I learned most things. I don’t really know your company or anything about ballet but, well, you seemed… cool I guess.”

It would have been a lie to say that Hux didn’t try to work out who Kylo’s family might be but there really wasn’t enough information there to narrow the list down. ‘Dancing adjacent’ could cover the entire entertainment industry, especially if the man had started out in the days of variety shows and movie musicals.

Hux hadn’t brought much with him, but he had brought his practice shoes and the floor, while cluttered and slightly uneven looked like a real dance floor. Perhaps Kylo had liberated it from some studio that was being renovated or shutting down. Like the wall of mirrors. Second hand things made beautiful.

“Well, I don’t know all that much about belly dancing, I mean, there are ballets with dances from other countries but…” He trailed off, the ‘not belly dancing, and not for the men’ hanging in the air like some uncomfortable judgement by his profession against Kylo’s. “Still, there’s lots of things that transfer from one style to another. I’d love to show you.”

Kylo glanced at Darcy’s feet as he changed his shoes, apparently confused by the shape but he didn’t say anything. He just turned the music back on and somehow the beat drew them both into something unplanned and unexpectedly life changing.

* * *

“Oh my god,” Hux said breathlessly, half leaning, half clinging to the doorframe. “I can’t do that anymore. That wall. It’s like being in a hall of mirrors the whole time.”

Kylo chuckled. It was a deep appealing noise that made Hux regret his decision not to cling to him in his disorientation.

It had been a strange two hours. The time had flown by in an odd mixture of showing off and teaching, each of them pulling out their most impressive moves to baffle the other before taking pity and demonstrating the action. And of course demonstrating a step often meant correcting the other’s position. Lots of correcting. It was flirting entirely through touch. Hux hadn’t had this much fun in years.

But Hux was used to practicing with a real mirror and performing without, whereas this was some hellish combination of the two with the added distraction of the reflections being in the wrong place.

He’d look up to check the placement of a hand, or the angle of Kylo’s arm and see empty space. Or a foot. Or, on one occasion which had made him trip over his own feet, one concave mirror had managed to reveal the fact that Kylo wasn’t wearing underwear. That had been a revelation.

After that his treacherous brain had insisted that they look out for more glimpses and he’d gotten steadily more dizzy until he was overwhelmed.

Kylo stepped closer, holding a towel out like some kind of shield between them. Mysteriously it had cartoon kittens woven into it. Hux wasn’t sure why he noticed that, but it suddenly seemed like the only real thing in the flat.

“How do you do it?” Hux asked accepting the towel and noting that while Kylo didn’t meet his eye he didn’t step back again.

Immense shoulders shifted in an almost hypnotic shrug. “Practice. You get used to it.”

“The fact that you can dance the way that you do, with this as your practice space, Kylo it’s amazing.”

“I move where the music tell me to move.” He said after a second or two of studying his bare feet. He seemed to be blushing under the sweat. “I don’t dance like you. You’re the same every time. I… I was watching you. When you repeat a step, you repeat it exactly. I can’t do that. That’s, that’s why I didn’t stay to talk to the artistic directors.”

Hux pushed off the doorframe to right himself. The movement brought him to within a few inches of Kylo’s face.

Instead of moving back Kylo held his ground, his eyes flickering down towards Darcy’s lips and then up towards his hair. It was like he was studying his face in pieces, the same way he looked at the mirrors.

“I work with an ensemble, with partners, people have to know where I’m going to be or else someone could get hurt. Especially with jumps. I’ve been kicked in the face by an airborne ballet dancer, I’d really rather not do it again.” Hux paused and licked his lips. Kylo’s eyes followed the path of his tongue. “Still, there’s a lot to be said for spontaneity. The unexpected has its merits.”

“Oh?” Kylo was smiling, his tongue just nudging out between his teeth. It was adorable.

“Yep.”

Hux kissed him.

There was a heartstopping moment where Kylo didn’t move and Hux thought he might have made a terrible mistake.

Then huge hands closed around his waist and he got to find out what being lifted by Kylo felt like. Though he didn’t notice for the first few seconds because he was far too busy focusing on the sensation of Kylo’s tongue in his mouth.

“Oh, well, yeah I can see how spontaneity would be a good thing.” Kylo murmured when he pulled back enough to rest their foreheads together.

Hux made a noise that was definitely not a giggle. It just sounded like one.

“Uh, I ah…” Kylo lowered him back towards the floor as he struggled for words. “I was thinking, well, hoping, if you came and you, had fun, that maybe we could share dinner or something, but…”

Sheepish seemed to be Kylo’s most common expression. He was starting to fold in on himself again, like he’d been at the pub the first time they met. Hux tried to prevent this by letting his hands run down Kylo’s back towards his very tempting arse.

Kylo smiled a little as he continued, “When I checked my emails I realised all the food apps have stopped delivering here. Because of the fox. And the guys downstairs.”

“Downstairs?”

He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “It’s supposed to be a Chinese restaurant but I’m pretty sure the owner is Glaswegian mafia…”

It shouldn’t have been funny. But somehow, pressed close to this baffling man he still knew almost nothing about, Hux couldn’t help but laugh delightedly.

“Grab your things. You can come back to mine where there’s a proper mirror and a much bigger floor space.” He laughed again. “And I promise I’ve never been barred by a restaurant due to feral animals. Or feral Scotsmen.”

Kylo stared at him wide eyed before dipping forward for another kiss.

Hux had several hundred ideas in his head. Only 62% of them involved dancing and less than half of them involved clothes.


	4. Hauntings of Ghola

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shhhhh...

They tumbled down the stairs like something from a musical, Kylo gripping him at the waist and swinging him round at every landing. Hux laughed relieved and giddy and desperately trying to ignore the knot of anxiety forming deep in his stomach.

What was he doing? He didn't know this man. Didn't know his real name or anything about him. Except the way he moved and the way he smiled and the way he kissed and the electric sparks his hands sent up his spine every time he lifted him or turned him. 

Kylo said he'd never danced with a partner and yet they were already moving together seamlessly for minutes at a time. There was great potential there but did it mean they were somehow fated to be together, or just that Kylo was a liar? 

Hux wasn't sure. 

And yet he was still leading this man to his home. This man who’d memorised his tube station on their first encounter and thought offering to share a taxi based on that slightly creepy information was a great pick-up line. 

Feeling a bit weird about it Hux sent Dopheld a text with Kylo’s address details and a blurry photo he'd surreptitiously snapped on the escalators down to the Tube. Over a decade of anonymous hookups and one night stands but still he felt a little reassured that someone knew where he'd been and who with. Why he felt like that today he wasn't sure and that was bothering him the most.

The reason finally struck him when their carriage filled with a gaggle of preteen dance students and their glossy looking parents, all excitedly talking about some event or other at Covent Garden. This wasn't a date. This wasn't just flirting with some other dancer for the sake of a few hours stress relief or a few months of post-performance distraction. Whether they slept together or not- this was about the dance. 

He'd felt hints of it the first time he'd seen Kylo move but it had seemed to fill his bones in that little room of broken mirrors. Kylo had wrapped an arm around his waist and Hux knew instantly that this was the inspiration that would last a lifetime. Even if nothing came of it with Kylo himself, the way he'd felt in that room was going to shape the rest of his career.  _ How _ he wasn't sure yet, but the promise of something was there all the same.

“Wow.” The word was said so tonelessly that Hux couldn't be sure if Kylo was impressed or just surprised. 

The flat was certainly more than most dancers could afford but the views, or just the rehearsal space, were worthy of the reaction by themselves. There was no point bringing too much attention to it- there were already so many differences between them professionally and socially that to highlight the economic as well would be more than gauche.

He decided to treat the space like Kylo had treated his own- as if it were normal.

Hux kicked his shoes off by the door and headed to the kitchenette while Kylo divested himself of his heavy buckled boots. “Water?”

“Sure,” Kylo shrugged awkwardly. He didn’t look comfortable in the clean white minimalist space. He took the proffered bottle but did nothing with it.

How had Hux become comfortable in Kylo’s space? He’d been distracted from it. 

A few seconds poking at his phone had the flat’s inbuilt sound system beginning one of the slower songs from his ‘Kylo Playlist’. He really needed to rename that soon before Kylo saw it, but for now Kylo was giving him a shy smile of relief and Hux found he wasn’t interested in anything but taking the man’s hand.

Before they’d left his flat Kylo had changed into something a little less ostentatious- leggings and a flowing black tank that didn’t really cover anything. As he led them across the floor towards the mirrors Hux thought they looked like a personification of opposites. Him all thin lines drawn in white, gold and red; Kylo’s solid strength captured in black, silver and blue. It’d look just as striking on stage as it did here. 

If he hadn’t spent a lifetime dedicated to his aesthetic Hux might have been surprised that his his mind was already taking staging notes before they’d even settled on any kind of performance. Or even that there would be any kind of performance at all. But he knew himself, and he knew how his mind worked, so he just rolled his eyes.

How to begin? Kylo was staring at him, his gaze flickering from one point of focus to the other. What did the music remind him of? Something mechanical becoming organic. He didn’t have his shoes on, both of them barefoot, but it didn’t really matter for what he intended.

At first Hux moved with small sharp jarring motions. He used his full range of stretch and flexibility in small increments that demonstrated the best of his control. A leg slowly rose until his knee was by his face and then he was arching back. He could see in the mirror that Kylo had frozen as Hux maintained a standing split, his head lowering down toward his ankle.

Hesitantly Kylo reached out a hand just before the music shifted. Hux righted himself, grinned and spun away. Kylo got the hint.

He circled Hux as he spun, his movements turning predatory. Hux came to a halt and moved dramatically back. Step for step Kylo followed. 

From the corner of his eye Hux could see the delightful contrast of his light angular movements and Kylo’s own sinuous but grounded style. He hadn't done this in years. Just playing, no choreographer but what was in his own heart at that precise moment. But it felt right to lead Kylo here and now, to make a move and build on his reaction. 

Kylo kept reaching for him and he kept on ducking away, sometimes bending or twisting, and sometimes leaping. The song had changed but they were still moving. Kylo was adding embellishments of his own now, feigning disinterest or distraction until Hux moved close enough for him to almost touch again.

The whole process was so exhilarating that it took Hux longer than he would like to admit to realise that Kylo was keeping his back to the mirror wall. Hux had a marvellous view of himself but the only reflection he could see of Kylo was his arse. 

It was a great arse but once he’d noticed it the artificial limitation of Kylo’s position started to throw Hux off. He tried to force Kylo to face the mirror with his own movements but that stunted the fluidity things. The pure fun began to fade from the dance.

Finally Hux stopped, his back to the mirror and his hands on his hips. At first Kylo continued, catching his hand around Hux’ waist at last, then stumbled to a stop when the redhead failed to move.

He looked at Hux. His gaze skittered away after a moment as it always did, shifting to the side. Abruptly his posture sagged and his eyes dropped to the floor where they traced the lines of the wood.

“What’s wrong?” Hux asked, touching Kylo’s chin to make him look up. It lasted only a second before Kylo glanced behind him and then tipped his head back down.

Oh. 

Hadn’t he noticed that Kylo avoided the mirrors in the gym while he was weight training? And much of the comedy of errors in their first meetings had happened because Kylo performed in a mask. The patchwork of broken mirrors in his practice room might well be for more than just aesthetic or economic necessity. 

Hux tried to raise Kylo’s head again. He held firm for a moment before consenting to the adjustment, but kept his eyes closed.

Kylo danced half naked- hell there were videos of him dancing online wearing only a string or two of beads and nothing else- but he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. 

More than anything Hux regretted his reaction to Kylo’s appearance the first time they’d met. In the last few hours this unusual face had grown on him until he couldn’t imagine why he’d ever found it repulsive, but Kylo must have had that reaction more than once to have such poor self esteem now.

It was a shame. He looked so different when he smiled and moved with confidence. If only he could capture that feeling all the time then there’d be far fewer negative responses. Half the issue was the poor posture and sullen expression.

Hux kissed him gently over each eye, trying to put some reassurance into the gesture. He’d expected Kylo to lean in gratefully. Instead he shook his head and turned away to put his back to the mirror again.

“I don’t like to see that face when I dance,” he said after a few deep breaths. “I’d rather forget it and everything about it. That’s not who I am. I want to be who I am on the inside. The mask lets me do that. It lets me be Kylo, not Ben.”

Hux- who had always been Darcy Hux as loud and proud as he could possibly be- didn’t understand, but he had the wits to realise that this was something more than just embarrassment at his aesthetics. Did he want to get into some deep psychological discussion with the odd man he’d invited into his home immediately after their first meeting, or did he want to continue the dancing?

“Did you bring your mask?” Apparently his mouth had decided to continue the dancing with no input from his brain.  

Kylo shook his head. “I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, dancing with a partner.”

“Wait there a minute,” Hux murmured before hurrying over to his wardrobe. 

He had all kinds of random props in an old trunk, an odd mix of things he’d ‘borrowed’ from theatres while travelling with his father and the remnants of his days in smaller companies. He’d never danced in a mask but he and Mitaka had once created a Matthew Bourne inspired version of  _ Giselle _ , trying to capture the ethereal female ghosts with an all male cast. It had gone well in the scheme of things and he’d kept the Wili costume as a souvenir.

The veil was dark grey and waist length, incredibly light and fine so it wouldn’t hide the performer’s shape too much, though it had still needed dramatic makeup underneath. Hux hoped it would be enough.

“Try this,” he said, holding it out. Kylo looked confused for a moment, then accepted the bundle of fabric.

Instead of fixing it to his hair with the clip at the centre of the circle of fabric, Kylo neatly wrapped it around his head like… well, like the desert nomads from the Dune story that inspired all of his work. It wasn’t as dramatic as his mask, and Hux could still see some of his features through the weave, but it highlighted his bright sad eyes where the mask had only hidden them. 

When Kylo turned to face him this time- and it  _ was _ Kylo, all upright powerful posture and deliberate sensual movements- Hux suddenly got the impression that he was looking directly into his soul. If telepathy were real then this is what it would feel like. 

They were dancing again without a word spoken between them.

Kylo stepped forward. Hux stepped back and left, leading them in a collapsing spiral until Kylo’s thigh was between his own and a massive hand was at his waist. 

The music dipped and Hux followed, lifting his right leg around Kylo’s waist as they both poured back and down over one of Kylo’s thighs. 

They held for a moment, undulating slowly with the beat until Kylo righted them with a shimmy that had Hux biting his cheek in an effort to remain professional.

_ You brought this man back here for a reason,  _ his conscience whispered quietly while they curved around one another,  _ don’t lie to yourself.  _

Hux was using the solid muscle under his hands to support increasingly dramatic backbends, fully aware that this position put them firmly crotch-to-crotch. 

He’d seen glimpses of Kylo’s cock in his nude videos and briefly reflected in the broken mirror wall, but that really hadn’t done justice to the reality. How anyone hung like this could be all that concerned about his face he didn’t know. Frankly Hux was beginning to forget all about his own body just from proximity to it.  

Kylo seemed to be trying to prove himself after the lapse with the mirror. If Hux had thought they were dancing well together before it was nothing on what they had now. 

The spiral pattern and the close contact continued but Hux found that he was being controlled like Kylo used his skirts and beads in his performances. Every movement highlighted something about the music, about Kylo’s body, about the emotion of the song.

He was picked up like he was insubstantial as Kylo’s veiled fans, spun out and around before he was drawn back in to twine around that thick muscular torso. 

Hux was lead dancer for a reason, he was not a prop to be used. He pushed back and away, twisting on impossibly quick feet and tying Kylo in knots as he tried to pursue. 

Laughter filled the room, breathless and heady, not mockery but joy and lust and bone deep pleasure at the chase. 

Time and again Kylo almost caught him, got a handful of tunic or briefly closed on a wrist, getting closer and closer until…

The mirror was shockingly cold against Hux’ cheek and the exposed jut of his collarbones, but Kylo was hot and so so welcome when he draped panting over his back. The barre dug into his waist, forcing his arse out against the thick line of Kylo’s cock. 

Hux hadn’t been entirely certain before whether Kylo had been getting hard, or just very well endowed, but the moist pulses of precome soaking through two layers of leggings proved it now. 

Kylo rutted against him with surprisingly gentle but determined strokes in time with the music. Huge hot hands were pawing at his hips and crotch to pull him more firmly back into every stroke while Hux did his best to reach around for Kylo’s hip to do the same.

It didn’t matter that they were still dressed. Hell it didn’t even matter that the man behind him had a scarf around his face and couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. Hux could look.

He pushed away from the mirror with one hand, enough that he could see himself flushed pink and drenched in sweat. The shift forced Kylo’s cock a little further into the cleft of his ass, the head pressing firmly at his hole with every flex of Kylo’s thighs. 

Hux whined and Kylo responded by nipping lightly at his neck through the gauze. The sensation was strange and oddly impersonal in a way that shot right to Hux’ balls. 

He wondered what it’d be like to let Kylo take him there on the floor in front of the mirror. Not frotting like this through too many clothes- naked, coated in nothing but smeared gold body paint. 

He could see it as clear as day, Kylo’s mask behind him, his fingers leaving bruises as they hauled his hips back to meet every impossibly deep thrust.

Just as the thought crossed his mind Kylo’s hand closed over his cock, stroking hand and fast though the soft fabric of his leggings.

They came together at the crescendo of the music, each spilling with a groan into their clothes.

“Holy fuck,” Hux sighed and let his face fall forward against the glass once more. “Oh my god.”

“Now I can see why dancing with a partner is so popular.” Kylo’s voice was ragged against his ear, hitching slightly as his hips still gave an occasional fitful jump. 

Hux chuckled. “Despite the rumours, we don’t actually do that.”

“No?”

“No.” Hux said, watching his breath fog against the glass. “Costumes are expensive, the dressers would kill us if we didn’t take them off first.” 

The peal of laughter that rang out behind him, seemed to rumble deep in his belly and fill him with a second wave of almost orgasmic pleasure. There was something about hearing Kylo happy that he could get addicted to, just like he’d become addicted to watching him dance. It filled a space in his soul he hadn’t realised existed until now.

“Mmm… What foresight you have,” Kylo murmured. His body was beginning to slump heavily over Hux’ much lighter frame. The contrast between the mirror and the man was beginning to lose it appeal, and the barre against his hips would bruise soon.

“I’m not a slut.”

“No, you’re perfect.” Kylo kissed him once more through the makeshift scarf and pushed back. He moved awkwardly, a sight that make Hux grin until he moved himself and remembered the cooling stickiness at his crotch. 

“Let me throw everything in the wash,” he suggested on his way into the kitchenette. He tried to walk with proper dancer’s grace, but he could feel globs of cum slipping toward the crease of his thigh and it made him shudder. “We can take a shower and get some food in the meantime.”

Across the room Kylo was blinking at him in confusion, the grey veil pulled down to sit around his neck like a thundercloud. “You want me to stay?”

“Of course.” Hux smiled at him. “I can’t send you back on the tube looking like that, and besides, I have an idea for a project you might be interested in. Dancing with a partner, for real, in a way that plays to both our strengths.” 

* * *

In the end Kylo didn’t leave at all that night. They sat on the balcony, sharing dim sum and pouring over the laptop on the table between them until dawn.

Hux had half expected them to fall into bed together, or to give into temptation in the shower. But with his face uncovered Kylo was sweet and affectionate, all uncertain touches and clumsy kisses. It seemed that dance was their foreplay and physical intimacy with Kylo had to begin with music. Hux thought he could more than live with that, though they’d need to find a way to control themselves if his idea for a performance was going to become reality.

Kylo had commented on Hux’ unfailing ability to hit his marks. He’d worked for years on it. His father had filmed him running his routines over and over until any recordings could be overlaid with almost no difference between them. Seeing Kylo’s work had made him dream about greater spontaneity but the contrast between them was also beautiful, and this could be a game changer for them both.

It would take a lot of work. There were seven or eight people he’d need to convince, but if he could get Snoke on side then that would be half the battle won. He just had to hope the man wasn’t too offended by Kylo running away.

His mind was whirling around the subject the next morning as he walked hand-in-hand with Kylo back towards the tube station. They hadn’t slept at all. Today’s rehearsal and performance would be hell but he was certain it was worth it. 

He blamed the sleep deprivation and his preoccupation with their plans for his failure to register the fact that Kylo was talking until he’d already missed most of the sentence.

“... Skywalker.”

It was the strangest thing to hear apparently apropos of nothing. It was a nice sunny morning, London was just waking up around them, and Kylo was talking about _ that _ .

“Wait, what about that sleazy porn mag?” 

Hux had seen one once. It had been so very 70s, despite the edition having been published in the 90s. He wasn’t strictly gay, he’d always chosen his lovers on aesthetics more than anything else, but that magazine full of weirdly distorted women had certainly put him off for a while. Even now he couldn’t understand the appeal.

Kylo was giving him a hurt look, as if Hux had insulted  _ him _ . 

The huge man released his hand and turned to lean against the parapet of the bridge they were crossing. When he irritably scrubbed his fingers back through his hair the pose and the soft dawn light made his face look younger. Hux blinked, and suddenly understood the link between ‘Skywalker’, ‘Ben’ and the man in front of him. 

No one who didn’t know would recognise him now, Hux was certain, not with the slouching shoulders and permanent pout. And the muscle. So much muscle. He’d changed immeasurably since his childhood 15 minutes of fame. 

Ben Organa had had a difficult upbringing through no fault of his own. He had been the son of former anti-porn campaigner and current California governor Leia Organa, who was herself a secret lovechild of a Hollywood starlet and Anakin Skywalker, one of the world’s most infamous pornographers. The boy Ben had ended up featuring in one or two of her campaign videos as an example of childlike innocence until the truth about her parentage had slowly leaked to the press. 

Hux had been too young and self involved to follow most of it but he remembered his father and other influential media types. If he remembered correctly Skywalker had actually been in a relationship with an older man for most of his life and ran his empire as nothing more than the business it was, but that wouldn’t have mattered to a confused teenager. 

Ben had been a cute tiny child, Kylo was built on some super human scale. Ben had been used as some well intentioned pawn in a campaign he was too young to understand. Kylo was an adult now and clearly unsettled in his sexuality. He needed a therapist. He’d found the stage, and a mask. 

If Hux could find a way to free him from that, to show him he didn’t need it, how amazing would he become? 

“Hey, you’re Kylo to me,” he said, holding out his hand.

“So you do remember me?”

Hux shrugged. “No, I’ve only just met you. Stories about some kid called Ben are just that- stories. I’ve never met him. But I want to get to know Kylo, if I can. And I want, more than anything, to dance with Kylo. On a stage, with an audience. Do you think we can do that?”

Kylo didn’t reply, but he took his hand all the same.  

He could feel the warmth of him against his shoulder as they walked. It was hard to imagine Kylo feeling as insubstantial as he seemed to think.

Hux had no idea what it was like to doubt himself. He’d had been raised with a brittle kind of self-confidence hammered into every fibre of his being. There’d been no room for failure or second best and Hux had formed that around himself like an armour. Hell, until the last few weeks he hadn’t even been aware of it. 

He was all ego and Kylo had none. Well he’d just have to learn to share then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter they're dancing to [Rebirth Of The Machine Empire](https://open.spotify.com/track/4yjzMdoOQhjwJbbwaWay7o) and [Hauntings of Ghola](https://open.spotify.com/track/1DdfCSs2WulLdMem3no8kd)


	5. The Dance Of The Incense Bush

Approaching the Artistic Director’s office always felt like going on a quest to some ancient dragon’s lair. 

The atmosphere was definitely intentional. 

Despite the man’s advanced age and frail limbs he still insisted on keeping his office on the highest level of the building. Stifling in summer and freezing in winter, with clouds of dust being continually stirred up by the technical crews, this level would have traditionally been reserved for storage and the lowest members of the company.

In contrast the manager’s office was much closer to the beating heart of the theatre. Not to mention the bar and the dressing rooms. 

Snoke wanted to be isolated. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts and his art where dancers and designers with illusions of grandeur couldn’t irritate him. It was no coincidence that Krennic’s office was in the basement, whatever the man said about the size of the space. Snoke wanted to be left alone. 

The floorboards creaked under Hux’ heel and he almost levitated with fright. It was ridiculous to be scared of shadows in a theatre he’d known for years, but Snoke seemed to be cultivating cobwebs and piles of disquieting broken props. There was a heap of mannikin heads to the left of his door for no apparent reason.

It was like the Phantom of the Opera had escaped from Lloyd Webber’s grasp and decided to haunt a modern ballet company instead.

“Mr Snoke?” Hux called toward the open office door. 

He was struggling to keep the exhaustion and fear out of his voice. If they were going to do this, he needed to make a good impression.

The voice that replied sounded like something that had been disturbed from its crypt. Hux was glad the door kept Snoke from seeing the shudder he hadn’t quite been able to contain.

“What do you want, Hux?”

That wasn’t an invitation to come in. Hux stayed where he was, his hands behind his back like a faux military stance might make him a little braver.

“I wanted to talk to you, Sir, about an idea for a production.”

A heavy sigh seemed to rattle something in Snoke’s lungs. It might have been moths. “Go away, Hux, we  _ have _ a new production in progress already.”

Which was true, but development wasn’t performance yet. There would be at least a few empty days between the current piece and the next.

“This could just be one performance to begin with, Sir, minimal outlay to yourself…”

“No!” There was a squeak of casters like the man had literally lept from his chair. Perhaps Hux should leave it to another time. 

His mouth decided to make one more attempt. “It would involve Kylo Ren, Sir, the belly dancer.”

Silence. It spread through the dusty corridor until Hux could hear the distant chatter of the set dressers on the stage.

_ Well done, Hux, _ he thought as he turned to go,  _ now you’ve pissed off the old bastard. He’ll probably block you out of spite now.  _

He had one slippered foot on the top step of the stairs when Snoke quietly asked, “You know Kylo Ren?”

Hux managed to resist the urge to grin. ‘Oh yes, Sir, we frotted in my apartment just last night’ would not be a helpful answer. He settled for just, “Yes, Sir.”

The door creaked open, apparently under its own power and Hux once again wondered if Snoke’s first name was actually ‘Igor’. 

“Get in here.” Snoke snapped. “Now.”

* * *

Explaining his idea took longer than he expected, mostly because Snoke kept interrupting him to probe for more information about the mysterious dancer who’d snubbed him and his competitors at the restaurant.

Hux did his best to disemble. Kylo was a very private person and should be allowed to choose what he revealed about himself. 

If Snoke was even half the age that Hux suspected then he’d probably met Kylo’s grandfather in some capacity. Hux’ father certainly had, a simply google search had revealed as much. The entertainment industry had always been closely knit and even more so back in the 70s. Hux didn’t need Kylo getting cold feet because Snoke unexpectedly mentioned something about his family.

Finally the old man let his drive for success silence his offended ego and he watched Hux’ explanation with a worrying kind of focus. He stared so flatly that Hux half wondered if he’d died. It was an excellent technique- no one faced with that blank look would waffle or ramble, they’d get to the point clearly and concisely in the hope of getting away a little quicker. 

“So, just the two of you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You think you can fill the theatre?” Snoke asked skeptically. Money was always the bottom line with him. 

“With the right marketing, yes.” Hux replied. “Did you see any empty seats at the restaurant performance? He has his fanbase, they’ll travel for something as exclusive as this, and I have mine. Plus a number of my father’s contacts owe me a favour or two.” 

_ The less said about the nature of those favours, the better,  _ Hux added in the privacy of his own head. From the look on Snoke’s face the old man knew anyway.

“And if it fails?”

“Sir?”

Papery skin seemed almost to crackle as Snoke folded his face into an approximation of a smile. “You don’t think we’ll be taking the risk in this endeavour do you?”

Oh. Snoke wanted him to foot the bill if the ticket sales weren’t enough. 

_ But you’ll certainly take the credit, _ Hux thought bitterly. He raised his chin with the arrogance that made up his very bones. “What risk?”

His smirk got him a shrewd nod in return. 

“Nice try. I think twelve month exclusive contracts for the pair of you, with a five year non-compete clause will do perfectly.”

Snoke would own them. Any attempt to leave would destroy their careers. 

Hux felt his heart simultaneously sink and try to crawl out of his throat all at once. Such a clause would be legally unenforceable but the cost of taking it to court would probably ruin Kylo and possibly himself too. 

“In that case there’d be no motivation for you to promote the show at all!” Hux spat. “It’d be in your best interests to sabotage us!”

The blank stare was back. 

Hux huffed through his nose. “If the production fails to break even I’ll pay you the costs myself.” He couldn’t afford it, but it should be enough to get Snoke to be reasonable…

“Four times the cost.”

Bastard. Hux opened his mouth to retort but closed it when Snoke held up his hand. 

“Don’t underestimate how much your friend offended me.” He said, all sharp edges under the graveyard crackle of his lungs. “I am only allowing this because it will show the rest of London that I could get him when they couldn’t. If he isn’t enough of a draw to fill that theatre then he will have humiliated us for a second time and that I will not permit.”

The horrifying smile deepened. “Of course, you can always pay off the debt some other way.”

Hux swallowed the bile rising in his throat. There were ways of doing this. He’d create so much hype the ticket site broke under the weight of demand. Break even? He’d make sure it sold out and rub it in Snoke’s face for the rest of forever.

“Deal.” He said out loud, and offered his hand. 

Snoke just glared at it.

“I’ll have Tarkin draw up a contract.” He said. “Now, get out and get back to work.”

‘We’re in!’ Hux texted Kylo on his way back to rehearsals. There really was no need to share all the details with him, it’d only make him worry.

* * *

Hux had known Kylo was self taught. He had definitely been told that fact but he hadn’t understood it.

Not until now. 

Kylo wasn’t just self taught in terms of dancing- it was everything. 

The man was a DJ but he used the vaguest possible terms for music and mixing. He talked about lighting by waving his hands and forgetting which side was stage left for the eighteenth time in an hour. He described ballet movements with a strange combination of correct terms and pop culture references. Hux never wanted to hear the term ‘Naruto run’ in reference to Swan Lake ever again.

They had a plan in mind, but putting it into practice was proving difficult, at least if they wanted to keep the details secret. 

Hux had been forced to buy Krennic a bottle of Talisker to make up for the disappointment of not getting to dress - by which he meant fondle and manhandle in the name of good fit - a man of Kylo’s stature. 

The lighting engineer had almost mutinied when Kylo had used the phrase ‘orangey-green’. 

What should have been a relatively routine and minor appearance on breakfast television to promote the show - which hadn’t involved Kylo speaking or removing his mask- resulted in a panic attack that lasted three days. That had been embarrassing, though Hux had carried the interview well despite the slightly trembling man beside him. 

Neither of them had expected such a visceral reaction to the camera. Apparently Kylo’s childhood experiences as a pawn in his mother’s schemes had affected him more than he realised. 

The whole situation forced Hux to reassess his plan of attack. He’d hoped that television appearances would showcase their physicality but the stress wouldn’t be helpful for the performance. 

A quiet early morning visit to the home of a senior editor, the mention of a flash drive containing certain images the man’s wife might like to see- images that didn’t actually exist - and the next day Kylo was featured on the front page of one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country. 

That was effective. Photographers who hadn’t worked with Kylo before clamoured to get a session and he was soon splashed across the pages and websites of a dozen publications. 

Hux’ only regret was that he couldn’t take advantage of the attention for his own publicity. 

They were a week out from the show and Hux was exhausted. Snoke wasn’t allowing him any time out from the rehearsals for the company’s own upcoming performance, leaving him to fit Kylo in wherever he could. 

Today they were meeting in Covent Garden during a two hour break while Krennic tried to fix the female dancers horrible light-up dresses. The skirts were so heavy that they kept falling down, it a disaster. 

Hux had perched the smallest possible area of his ass on a bollard outside one of the pretentious French cafes to wait. He was nibbling on a macaron and trying not to feel guilty about calories when Kylo literally shimmied by.

“What the fuck?”

He’d been half heartedly watching some kind of Stomp tribute act performing their strange percussive dance for about ten minutes without noticing the shirtless man swirling among them. Judging by the crowd’s reaction he’d only just arrived. 

A woman wearing light up wobbly penises on her head and a ‘bride-to-be’ sash whistled obnoxiously. Kylo, mask firmly in place, performed a dip and wriggle that put his abs and pecs very much on display. 

She threw several notes at him like he was some kind of stripper. Belatedly Hux realised the notes had been purple and therefore twenties. Okay, not bad for a few seconds of dancing.

A quiet little note of jealousy tried to whisper horrible things in Hux’ ear, but his ego and lust overpowered it. A performance was a performance. Kylo wouldn’t be taking the hen party home with him, and that was all that mattered. 

It was hard to tell with the mask shadowing his eyes but Hux got the definite impression that Kylo was trying to make eye contact with him. Watching those massive hands for a moment he realised he was being subtly beckoned. 

Hux stuffed the macaron into his mouth before standing as nonchalantly as he could and moving closer to the front of the growing crowd. 

Kylo was whirling around the space now, his skirts flaring out like a dervish as he moved. 

That jealous voice murmured its approval of the leggings he was unexpectedly wearing underneath but most of Hux’ consciousness was focused on the sweat starting to glitter across his collarbones. It seemed that Kylo had dusted himself with some kind of pale golden powder and it was already beginning to run down his chest.

There was only a moment for Hux to wonder whether the decoration would come off on him when Kylo span past and grabbed his hand. 

The audience gasped as Hux tumbled into the performance space. He was used to such handling by now and had been expecting it, but he did his best to suggest he hadn’t been. 

It was fun to bring their improvisation in front of an audience, even if the music was unfamiliar to him. 

They’d never done this before. The structure of the piece for the formal performance was much different and for Hux the rehearsals had mostly focused on perfecting his own pre-choreographed sections. Even then it had only been seen by a handful of people, mostly lighting technicians trying to get a handle on the horribly complex job to come. 

So moving like this, free and without prior intent, was a wonderful change of pace and Hux found himself falling into it with ease. 

Being in the view of an audience really helped him. It always had done. His ego could get him so far but it did so much better when it was actively being fed by others’ admiration. They looked amazing together. Of course they did. 

“Oh my god! That’s Kylo Ren!” He heard someone in the audience say to their neighbour in a voice that carried surprisingly well.

“Oh wow, you’re right!” The other person replied in similar tones. “Isn’t he performing with the First Order Ballet Company soon?!”

“Yes! I think he is! I read it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!” The first voice continued.

“I really hope there are tickets still available!”

A third voice joined the chorus then with details of the website for the production.

It was all Hux could do not to laugh out loud. So that was Kylo’s plan for advertising. Well, judging by the number of people reaching for their smartphones it might well have worked. 

* * *

“I uh, wrote something. For the program.” Kylo said quietly from his place on the floor of Hux’ flat while they stretched in preparation for yet another run through.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I thought, well, the piece stands on its own, but an explanation deepens the meaning. Ties it back to its home universe.” He was talking with his hands, thick fingers making incongruously delicate gestures while his eyes shone with excitement. “Even if they haven’t read the book I want to give the audience a flavour of it.”

Hux had covered the mirrors now, partially for Kylo’s benefit and partially to simulate the actual performance space. It also meant that Hux could see his face as they danced which was a benefit Hux could see himself getting addicted to if he wasn’t careful. He already knew that he couldn’t rely on facial cues for any part of their performance, so he consciously wasn’t looking for that, but he just couldn’t help staring.

The feeling seemed to be mutual, though logically he knew that Kylo had to know every nuance of his performance if this concept was going to work. Still, it made his skin warm in a way that years of public performance never had.

“Read it to me,” Hux suggested softly as he took up the first position. 

The words rolled over him, in a voice as deep and rich as spice and coffee and the feeling in his heart until he could see the nighttime desert sands drifting around him, hear the calls of the nocturnal animals, feel the gaze of the stars on his skin. He was there, on Arrakis, transported to a world that had never existed.

“You can’t put that in the program.” 

Kylo started to make a noise of disappointment.

“You have to record it,” Hux continued. “You can’t trust that the audience will read it. You can’t be certain they’ll put the right emphasis on it. Only you can do that.”

“What, just like… play it at the beginning?” Kylo said. Hux wasn’t looking at him but he could hear the frown.

“There’s precedence- doesn’t the Dune movie start with Princess Irulan explaining the plot?” Hux asked. Kylo nodded. “Well then. You’re the princess.”

He couldn’t help grinning at Kylo’s mildly offended expression.

“I’m not an actor. I don’t talk on stage. Ever.”

“That’s why I said you should record it. We don’t change anything, we just build it into the soundtrack. Trust me. It’ll work.”

* * *

 

At last, an afternoon and evening off. 

A blessed chance to unwind, rest his aching feet, and finally spend some time with Kylo that didn’t involve their project. 

Just as soon as he got out of this goddamn costume fitting with Krennic. 

Hux stared at the ceiling, willing the man to shut up and get on with his job before they all died of old age. 

This was revenge for Kylo insisting he would handle his own costume, it had to be. 

Hux knew that the man wasn’t as dense as he was pretending right now and frankly he was losing patience. 

“Your hair is far too long. It’ll look bad after a few minutes under the lights.”

“Mm-hmm.”

An overfamiliar hand ran down his back to rest just about the waistband of his tights. Krennic never could keep his hands to himself. 

“Copper isn’t a very science-fictiony colour,” he went on, tugging at the flowing cuffs of the subtly iridescent shirt as if its very fabric offended him.

“It’s more of an alien fairy tale…” Hux replied. He let the peevishness seep into his voice. As far as he was concerned they were done, but Krennic couldn’t seem to stop criticising.

Krennic jabbed a finger at Hux’ abs as if it’d find even a millimetre of extra flesh there. 

“I’m not sure there’s any point to you wearing it open, not with a partner built like that.” Krennic said. “Now there’s a figure that should wear as little as possible.”

“Right.” Hux was more than glad that Kylo hadn’t ventured down here.

Somewhere above them a door slammed hard enough to shake the dust from the light fittings. Hux took Krennic’s moment of distraction as a chance to get out from under his hands and hurried towards his pile of clothes.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have something silver?” Krennic suggested as Hux changed back into his skinny jeans and oversized shirt, glad to have some real protection from those wandering fingers. “Or I have some holographic PVC…”

Hux stared in horror at the wall for a moment, visions of himself as a Doctor Who villain filling his mind until it contained nothing but incoherent screaming. 

Unable to think of a reply he bolted wordlessly for the stairs with his new costume in his hands. He just couldn’t trust Krennic not to ‘accidentally’ ruin it and replace it with some crime against good taste.

Crossing the foyer he almost ran into Snoke but found himself frozen to the spot by a look of simmering resentment. 

The Artistic Director said nothing. He walked on towards his office without a word. 

It was only when he stepped out into the street and saw the ‘sold out’ sign being pasted over their poster that Hux realised the reason for Snoke’s ire. Three days to go and they’d already won. Now they just had to give the performance of their lives.

* * *

Even on the clearest night the light pollution hides most of the stars over London’s skyline.

Hux had never really cared. There was still something calming about watching the city’s own glitter through the balcony windows. 

The blinking lights that warned helicopters of tall buildings and radio masts; the glowing curve of the ferris wheel; the offices of those working late and the homes of those just waking for the early shifts. Hux had always loved it all. 

The city was alive like nothing else he’d ever known. 

Millions of people. Millions of dreams. So many souls reaching for something more.

Beneath his ear Kylo sighed and settled more deeply into sleep.

Did Kylo really dream of vast endless wastes and the dull peace of an empty desert?

Hux wasn’t sure he could live in that kind of world. He needed to be seen. He needed to be acknowledged.

Sleep was creeping up on him now, stealing through tired muscles like a soft fog from every point of contact with the warm bulk of Kylo’s body. 

Slowly the lights beyond the windows became the brilliant glow of distant galaxies. The hot breath against his hair became the zephyrs of an incomprehensible desert. Sand surrounded him and shifted with every movement of his body. It flowed and swirled in a dance he knew like his own heartbeat.

The universe was an optical illusion coming into focus, the stars in the sky transformed into ships and planets filled with billions of beings. Every eye on him and the spirit of the desert. 

He was falling into the book, into the dance, into the strange world that seemed to fill Kylo’s head. This was who Kylo was performing for- not the audience, not Hux- but for the universe.

As he watched the sand became Kylo himself, sinuous and perfect, every rippling step the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Kylo smiled. There was no mask. Not here in the desert. The universe watched but it was too far away to see what was Hux’ alone to enjoy. Kylo smiled and his smile was made of moonlight and starlight and everything the city’s glow had hidden. 

For the first time in his life Hux wished he could see the stars from his bed, just as he wished the world knew how beautiful Kylo truly was. The universe already knew, but the world couldn’t see it until Kylo himself could see it.

In the way of all dreams the concept made sense to him as nothing else had before. 

Hux followed the shifting sand and pounding beat throughout the night, to a place that felt like home, until he finally woke still wrapped in Kylo’s arms. 

He frowned a little, confused by the strangeness of his imagination, but the steady beat of Kylo’s heart drew him back under and the dream was soon forgotten.

* * *

 

They stood side-by-side in darkness behind the stage, fingertips gently touching, listening to the sounds of the audience and the rhythm of their own breathing. Somewhere above them a stagehand gave the short whistle that signalled two minutes to curtain.

“Kylo?” Hux murmured. He felt the shift of Kylo moving his head towards him even though he could see nothing in the dark. “I need you to know- I love you. I’ve never met a man so perfectly imperfect in all my life, I wish you could see what I see.”

Before Kylo could reply Hux turned and made his way out onto the stage. It was time to take their places.

* * *

 

Almost imperceptibly the sound of the wind dancing over sand dunes filled the dark theatre. It flowed in billowing waves from one side of the stage to the other, a hundred billion grains of sand shifting with infinite and unending variety while the distant rumble of what might have been an animal broke through the meditative atmosphere.

“On a planet far from here in time and space, a Prince ruled by the order of his father, the Padishah Emperor.” A voice narrated in the tones of a huge and ancient bell. “The Emperor believed himself the master of the galaxy, and he had given the control of the most precious resource to his son that he might learn the art of government.”

Gentle amber light began to fill the stage like the rising of an alien sun to reveal a figure draped across a large dark bundle of glittering fabric. 

“But that resource,” the voice continued, “the drug that made both space travel and prophecy possible, could only be found on this most savage and unruly of planets. For here on the desert planet of Arrakis ‘the spice’- as it was known- was both sacred and all pervasive. The people of Arrakis did not wish to give up their treasure. They fought with a ferocity that surprised the Prince, though not his advisors. The Empire had controlled this world for generations, and yet the people would not submit.”

“Determined to be a wise and just ruler, the Prince went out with his troops to see the damage for himself, and so his transport was lost to an ambush. For three months his death was mourned by all the court until he awoke on the steps of his stronghold with no memory of the time that he had been missing. Although he did everything he could to convince the galaxy that he was unchanged, the locals gossiped and whispered that something was not right. Fear spread through ruling classes while the Prince found himself distracted by dreams of the creature that had saved him. A thing wholly of this world. A thing of spice, and magic, and wonder. A thing utterly unlike himself.

“Slowly but surely everything changed.”

The pale redheaded figure seemingly asleep at the centre of the stage twitched as the first strangely formal notes of a harpsichord cut through the stillness of the theatre. 

He arched back over his makeshift bed as he woke in stages, ostentatiously stretching each limb to show them to the best possible effect. 

A violin joined the music as the lights rose and Hux rose with it. He stretched his arms upward is a slow unrolling first to his full height, then further until he stood poised on pointe. 

As a whole male dancers didn’t often go up on their toes and not for long, but it had always been a speciality of Darcy’s, one that made his delicate frame seem all the more fragile despite the strength needed to maintain it. He used it now to seem as if he were floating across the stage, blown by the wind and carried by the violin, his feet touching the stage for the shortest possible time as if he were not part of this world or bound by its gravity.

He twisted and turned and lept, crossing the whole width of the stage and back as the music flowed from one speaker to another. A shifting soundscape to match the movements of the sand in ways that the old fashioned music was never meant to be heard. To the audience it felt like he was travelling further, as if they were following him through winding passageways and great open halls punctuated by the ringing of stone floors despite the soundless movement of his feet.

While he moved the light travelled too, crossing the stage in a mimicry of the sun passing overhead to fade from orange to blue and finally into sunset colours. In just a few minutes minutes they lived through a short and artificial day. 

As the music wound to a close Hux returned finally to the makeshift bed and fell over it for just a moment before the harpsichord rose again.

The song began anew, identical to the first iteration and once again Hux rose with it. 

Every step, every gesture, every expression was just as before. 

Pinpoint accuracy, that for now only the professionals watching would notice, but would soon begin to strike even the uninitiated as a little strange.

Nothing changed about the performance until the progress of the lights reached the midway point. Hux passed in front of the ‘bed’ and a hand followed him slowly from amongst the folds of the fabric. 

A murmur ran through the audience as people began to notice the change. Hux danced on unaffected while the fabric shifted and rippled slowly, flashes of glittering blue and shimmering silver showing through as it moved.

From somewhere at the rear of the auditorium a low, almost undetectable beat began to play in counterpoint to the stuffy, formal notes of the harpsichord. Patrons looked around confused as strangely alien voices seemed to whisper in their ears.

Hux was almost forgotten as the sunset colours returned and the pile of fabric somehow transformed into the half naked form of Kylo Ren.

Kylo knelt facing the audience. He arched back so that the thick muscles of his arms stood proud while his head tipped towards the floor to emphasis the rippling line of his stomach where it curved up towards the ceiling. 

His lower half was swathed in a great flowing mass of fabric- shimmering, glittering black skirts of lace and tulle and jewel studded net- while a dark cowl of satin wrapped around his hair and neck. Between the two his torso shone like moonlight on marble, a rock amongst all the softness.

The music reached its end and once again Hux fell uncaring across his ‘bed’. His torso draped over Kylo’s collarbone for a moment, the slim line of his body contrasting with that muscular bulk for just an instant before he rose again.

This time Kylo rose with him, hands reaching out for him with a soft clatter of bangles that Hux did not hear. 

Where before Kylo had worn a full face mask this time he had chosen something that covered only just past the bridge of his nose. 

Someone in the audience gasped aloud. Others shifted forward in their seats in surprise.

If Hux noticed the change to Kylo’s costume he gave no sign. He danced on as if Kylo wasn’t even there.

Where Hux went Kylo followed, slow and uncertain, tracing the path of the golden figure like a hesitant shadow.

At first he moved with gentle stealth, a slow flowing dance that mimicked the eddies of sand in a light breeze. He swayed with the music that built almost imperceptibly under the violin of Hux’ own song, unexpectedly weightless for such a massive man. 

Kylo was barefoot, though it was hard to see at first through the swaying mass of fabric. Huge feet, muscular and confident, settled with quiet steady grace where Hux deigned only to touch the boards with the toes of his pointe shoes. 

They reached the artificial sunset. At the very last moment Kylo knelt to catch Hux’ fall across his shoulders this time, his body as unmoving as a boulder under the other dancer’s weight. 

The two only touched for a moment, then the dance began again.

This time Kylo moved with more speed and certainty, circling Hux as he spun in place, darting across the stage to reach Hux’ landing points before Hux even began his jumps. 

Despite all of this Hux remained unaffected. His dance did not change, every step, every gesture the same, even when Kylo passed only inches in front of his face. 

Kylo’s belt, which was covered in glittering coins and trailing strings of blue glass nazar charms, jingled like wind chimes in a mounting storm when he became bolder in the face of Hux’ indifference.

The harpsichord and violin followed the same loop again. So too did Hux.

His accuracy could be trusted so completely that Kylo  was free to occupy any other part of the stage in whatever manner he might choose. 

Invariably he chose to be as close to Hux as humanly possible.

With every repetition of the pattern, as Kylo’s music swelled, he grew bolder and the gap between them closed.

But whatever Kylo did, however extravagant, Hux could not be distracted.

He danced as if there is no one else in the world, let alone on the stage. 

Kylo brought them nose-to-nose as Hux reaches the end of dizzying progression of travelling turns. 

Hux didn’t even blink.

A series of grand jetés followed. 

A unexpectedly deep backward bend had Kylo twisting himself under the jump so that Hux' thighs grazed his belt. Several audience members gasped out loud, expecting disaster, but Hux continued his routine undisturbed. 

Kylo was in full pursuit now, desperate for the attention of the haughty automaton who would not even meet his eye.

He whipped his skirts out while Hux passed as if to trap him. Thick arms tried to close around that delicate form when ‘sleep’ came, only to miss Hux by an instant. 

Kylo caught at the shimmering copper sleeves, caressed that emotionless face, tried to kiss those perfect lips. But he was always too late. 

The harpsichord had almost vanished beneath the pounding drums and swirling industrial rhythms when the tenth iteration began.

Instead of stalking Kylo simply stopped. 

Standing still as a statue, barely even breathing he stood in the centre of the stage, only his eyes moving to follow Hux through every twist and turn and spin.

In the middle of Hux’ first grand jeté Kylo moved like a striking snake and snatched Hux right out of the air. 

Now some of the audience were on their feet.

They've never seen Kylo work like this with another dancer, so close where they support each other's weight, touching each other, spinning each other. And yet. And yet. It looked as natural as breathing. 

Once Kylo dragged had Hux out of his jump he pulled him to his chest to shift into a spin. Hux’ shoes never even touch the floor.

Finally forced to acknowledge the being sharing his stage Hux smiled and let one leg fold around Kylo’s waist. 

He trusted Kylo’s strength completely in this, and as their spin increased speed he relaxed back to let his torso arch towards Kylo’s spreading skirts, his arms becoming an extension of the arc of fabric. 

Kylo changed direction. Hux folded in towards him, lithe arms wrapping around massive shoulders to sink into the hood and the dark hair hidden underneath. Hux’ legs swung out, his feet curving up towards the back of his own head. A beautiful bend that showed the contrasted in their bodies so perfectly. 

Nose-to-nose once more they allowed themselves one long lingering moment of eye contact before Kylo released Hux from his grip to spin away on pointe.

At the last moment, at the furthest extension of their arms, Hux caught Kylo’ wrist and pulled himself in once more.

Something dark clattered onto the boards to the left but Hux didn’t turn to look at it. 

He already knew what it was. It was Kylo’s mask.

They stood stock still for a moment, lithe grace and precision staring into the unmasked face of raw power and unbridled passion. 

Somewhere beyond the footlights the audience were cheering, but they didn’t notice.

Kylo smiled and stepped forward, leaning down as if for a kiss. 

Just as Hux tipped his face up to meet him, one powerful arm snaked around his waist.

Hux laughed delightedly as Kylo spun them out across the stage and the dance began once more. 

This was a dance that could go on forever. 

What they were apart was nothing to what they were together and they were determined to show the world, no, the universe, precisely what they could do.

Comic by mihrlin @ tumblr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The music for this chapter only exists in my head I'm afraid but its a blending of [Dance of the Incense Bush](https://open.spotify.com/track/1hSjOlkcOWInJ7tCeIzsRP) by Stoneburner and [La Folia](https://open.spotify.com/track/5lEB6n1M2jhO4vPVSQAWGY) by Emilie Autumn


	6. Epilogue

The sounds of the theatre are muffled here. 

The cheering that followed them off the stage and through the corridors died away a few minutes ago but the noise of a thousand shuffling feet still resonates like distant thunder. 

They’ll have to go out there soon.

But for now there’s just the sound of breathing and the rituals that follow every show. 

Hux stares into the mirror, absently wiping the makeup from his face with cloth. He isn’t looking at himself. He’s watching Kylo.

Kylo is already changed, already dressed in jeans and a shirt that seems to creak under the strain of the muscles it covers. The majority of Kylo’s makeup is smeared across his body so that only a shower can solve it, but the kohl around his eyes makes the brown seem to glow in the light of the mirror.

Not that Kylo would have noticed that. Kylo isn’t looking at himself. Not quite. 

Hux sits quiet and pretends not to notice as Kylo watches his hands run up his own sides. As Kylo studies the flex of his own fingers, shifting them through the forms of the dance. 

Hux thinks they’re beautiful. 

The slight curve of Kylo’s lips is more beautiful still.

Kylo’s attention turns to his arms, fingers running up to trace the firm mass of bicep and the curve of shoulder. 

Those shoulders, that sit so perpetually curved in when his face is uncovered, are gradually drawn back. The tall man stands taller, his body stretching wide and proud. 

In a way Kylo seems surprised at his own size. His fingers flutter for a moment at his collarbone and then move up.

Hux is biting his lip now, the cloth forgotten against his cheekbone, as Kylo takes in his lips, his nose, and finally the glitter of his eyes.

The swallow was the loudest sound in the room so far. Lips pursed and adam’s apple bobbing he seems to be arguing with himself, like holding eye contact with the face in the mirror was a bet he intends to win.

“Do you see?”

With a look of surprise Kylo turns his gaze towards Hux. Perhaps he forgot he wasn’t alone.

“Maybe,” he murmurs.

He turns his back to lean cross-armed against the dressing table. He doesn’t seem unhappy as he watches Hux dress. His shoulders relax but they don’t curve forward into the same customary slouch. 

Still he seems to be building nerves, fingers flexing against his biceps when Hux bends to pull on his street shoes.

“Come on,” Kylo says at last with a nod towards the door, “I’m sure we have a lot of people to speak to before the night is done.”

He steps forward to open the door but Hux once again catches hold of his wrist.

“You know, I think there’s something to be said for leaving them wanting more.”

Kylo stumbles over his words as he tries to protest - they worked so hard, this is what Hux has always wanted, the opportunity they’re giving up - only to find his voice halted by a kiss.

“There will be more performances, Snoke will insist. For now I want you to myself.”

They leave by a fire door that the stagehands rigged years ago for cigarette breaks and impromptu escapes just like theirs. It’s a cliche maybe, but neither of them care. 

It feels like running away, in a thrilling sort of way, like an extension of the dance. The prince and the desert leaving everything behind for one another.

Shaftesbury Avenue is heaving with tourists and Londoners alike as every production lets out and patrons stand blinking in the glow of the streetlights, the spell of the theatre still shining in their eyes. 

Hux and Kylo are two amongst thousands as they slip join the crowd heading home. Content to be grains of sand in the dune for a while.

Kylo slips an arm around Hux’ waist and pulls him close while they wait to cross at a junction. The kiss is long and slow and full of the words Kylo hasn’t yet learned how to say.

Somewhere above their heads in a tiny student flat the rhythm of drums pours out into the night, full of the promise of all the dances to come.

But for now the only dance that matters is with each other. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kylo was dancing to [The Inherent Evil Of Face Dancers](https://open.spotify.com/track/5qyGn7GAeGtqq3QZfQsvZu) and [Tlulaxa Flesh Merchant](https://open.spotify.com/track/16CtQItQSXQhqEYa8CVfE1) by Stoneburner


End file.
